Trying To Scope Out The Debt Ceiling Matter

Like they say, history repeats itself - first as tragedy, then as farce. I suspect we are entering the farce part.

The GOP has gone so bonkers over its plan to drive the nation into insolvency, whether it belongs there or not, that I'm beginning to suspect it's all part of a plan, and that they are nearly not as crazy as they seem.

I don't think the GOP is serious about national insolvency. What I think they plan to do is to force Obama to declare the debt ceiling null and void: fidelity to the 10th Amendment, and all that. Obama would then toss the matter to the Supreme Court for ultimate resolution, which would likely eventually side with him. Nevertheless, the House GOP would use the supposed outrage of Obama's action to force an impeachment. The Benghazi matter and Fast and Furious would be added to fortify the bill of indictment. The Supreme Court's opinion in support of Obama would be moot after an impeachment had been initiated.

Impeachment is unlikely to work: the trial would be held in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Still, impeachment is a political procedure, not a judicial one, and the effort would be enough to put the Obama Administration on the defensive. Opportunistic Republicans might seize on new matters to make things as hard as possible. Remember, this approach almost worked to drive Bill Clinton from power in 1998. Why not Barack Obama in 2013?

What is happening is that the Tea Party Republicans are using the sliver of undemocratic power provided by House of Representative's Hastert Rule to try to leverage power: first, within the House GOP, then the entire House, then the entire U.S. government, then the entire nation. In a funny kind of way, U.S. history is beginning to parallel the history of the Russian Empire. It is very much a conspiratorial authoritarian approach. It resembles the way the Bolsheviks eventually seized total power over Russia.

There is a specific episode in Russian history I'm thinking of: the coup of June 1907. The Tea Party folks may be using this as their template, with Obama standing in place of the Tsar:

The desired pretext came when the government became aware of ongoing revolutionary agitation among Tsarist soldiers.... On June 2, the imperial government demanded that the Duma hand over 55 Social Democratic deputies, who had (like all the members of the Duma) been guaranteed parliamentary immunity by the Fundamental Law, unless stripped of it by the legislature itself. Impatient at the Duma's lack of cooperation, it chose to arrest them anyway on the night of June 3, without awaiting the decision of a Duma commission set up to investigate the government's accusations. On June 3 the Duma was formally dissolved by Imperial Manifesto followed by Imperial edict (ukase), with Prime Minister Stolypin playing an important role in this act.

This action, which was perfectly legal according to the Fundamental Law (which gave the Tsar unlimited authority to dismiss the Duma at any time, for any reason that suited him), was followed by a dubious political maneuver. On June 3 a new electoral law was published, entirely on the Tsar's authority and without the consent of the Legislature. According to the new scheme, the wealthier landlords obtained sixty percent of the electors for the Duma; peasants got twenty-two percent, while merchants got fifteen percent and the remaining three percent went to the urban proletariat. Areas such as Central Asia were deprived of representation altogether....

The legality of this act was immediately challenged: according to the October Manifesto, new laws could not be enacted without the approval of the Duma, and neither Nicholas nor Stolypin has obtained the Duma's agreement prior to issuing this decree. The Fundamental Law did permit the Tsar to implement or change new laws without the Duma's consent, in intervals between sessions of the Duma (which is when the "coup" law was enacted), but these were supposed to be submitted to the new Duma within two months, and were subject to that Duma's power to suspend or repeal them. Furthermore, no such edict could ever make any changes in the Fundamental Law itself, which required not just the emperor's initiative but also the Duma's approval. Hence, the Tsar's new electoral statute had been enacted contrary to his own Fundamental Law. This raised the question of whether Russia was fundamentally a state ruled under an immutable organic statute (the Fundamental Law), or one still ruled by an all-powerful monarch.

The Tsar's government countered by insisting that since the Emperor had granted the Fundamental Law to begin with, he had the God-given right to unilaterally alter it (even though the Fundamental Law clearly said otherwise) in extraordinary instances, such as Nicholas claimed this to be. The manifesto of June 3, 1907 announcing this change specifically appealed to the Tsar's "historical authority" as the legal basis for these changes, which Nicholas asserted "cannot be enacted through the ordinary legislative route" since the Second Duma had been "pronounced unsatisfactory" by him.

The Tsar clearly indicated that his own authority, which he claimed to have received from God himself, superseded the authority of any law, even the Fundamental Law itself, which he himself had granted. This convinced many Russians that Nicholas had never embraced constitutionalism to begin with and that Russia ultimately remained an absolute autocracy hiding behind the facade of a constitution. Thus, the term "coup" came to be used to refer to the emperor's act even if it was not a coup d'état in the usual sense.

... Nicholas' heavy-handed actions in the "coup" crisis irreparably damaged his image (already battered from previous policies he had pursued). This, in turn, caused many of his subjects to eagerly embrace the next revolution when it finally came.

Our main salvation is that the Tea Party folks appear to be almost incompetent, and would blow up their plan along the way. But maybe the appearance of incompetence is window dressing. I smell a rat on Capitol Hill, and I hope a brewing coup d'etat would elicit some principled resistance from people who haven't sipped the 'tea'. But maybe we really are just this vulnerable to Tea Party dictatorship.

Back in the 1940's, George Orwell hazily foresaw something like this in America's future:

Certainly his criticism of totalitarianism can be applied to non-socialist ideologies (such as fascism), as his preface suggests by mentioning that for American audiences, "Ingsoc" could be replaced by "100% Americanism" or some such phrase.

We have met our masters, and they wear tricorner hats.